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alhenderson

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Everything posted by alhenderson

  1. Bit late to the party, but.. I built the Hasegawa a couple of years ago. Found the construction of the forward fuselage quite awkward, and needed a fair bit of filling. I guess they've engineered it so that they can get lots of different versions out of it. Anyway, my RFI if its of interest. Al.
  2. Your first model in 30 years was a Sword?? Bloody well done! I think my return to the hobby would have been extremely short if I'd have done that! 😀 She's a beauty though, well done! Al.
  3. Following on from my gloss varnish near miss the other week, I ordered some A Stand aqua gloss, having been recommended it by someone on Twitter. It duly arrived last week and I took some time to test it on my paint mule. Got to say, it's not easy to spray. You don't need to thin it, which I like cos it's one less thing to cock up, but it goes on very wet and it really looks awful to start with. Goes on with a milky finish and gathers in all the crevices. Have tried different air pressures but nothing seems to help it spray smoothly. Fair dues, though, it dries nicely - several goes on the mule proves this. Finally got brave enough to put some on the lightning, just the underside again, learning from past mistakes. You can see how it goes on 😬 trust the process, though, as it's dried just fine (just didn't have my phone on my screen I finally plucked up the courage to check). Think I can gloss the rest then get on with a small amount of weathering... Al
  4. Nice! I'm building that Matchbox one at the moment. Got some pylons and other bits from, I think, a Hasegawa kit. Sadly I don't have drop tanks or a recce pod - where did you get yours from? Al
  5. With the back end smoked up, I took 20 mins this morning to mask up the tail and the rear fuselage and spray Mr Mettalic Aluminium over what remained of the front half of the fingerprint. Was nervous about this (I'm nervous about everything on this Lightning now!) but it went fine: If you look closely you can see where I resprayed, but since these things were far from uniform I don't mind. The top of the fuselage near the jet pipe could do with something now I look at it, though.. Al.
  6. Thanks for the words of encouragement everyone. I left the lightning alone for a couple of days, retrieved her earlier to see what I could do about the fingerprint. Had a go with the little bit of sanding sponge and much to my surprise it came up nicely: You can't really tell it was a fingerprint, almost looks like weathering. Think I'll finish it off with some Tamiya smoke on the back end to better cover it up and do a bit of weathering at the same time. Will probably also mask off and spray a little bit ahead of the dashed black lines to cover up that bit as well. Hopefully not too onerous.. 🤞
  7. Thanks. You are, of course, right. It's just frustrating that I get very little time at the moment and then something like this happens. I'll try and mask off and respray the fingerprint tomorrow, and I have some aqua gloss coming for the rest of it. I think my problem was the use of an alcohol based varnish on top of the alcohol based paint, meaning it reactivated the paint. I'd always thought you should use the same type of varnish as you do paint. Looks like metallics in particular don't like that.. Al
  8. Weather's been really cold here recently, plus we've got builders in so haven't had much chance to progress this. Managed to steal 20 minutes this morning to get a gloss coat on the decals. The Mr Hobby aqueous gloss has had an odd effect: Its made it look a lot more 'grubby', but not really in a good way. Luckily I only did under the wings and then stopped when I realised. I had tried it on my paint mule gnat, but the finish on that is rubbish anyway so would not have noticed. I then must have got thinner or something on my fingers: Its not an exaggeration to say I'm well and truly fed up of this thing now. I might abandon glossing and weathering entirely (wasn't going to go overboard anyway) - I have other gloss varnishes, but have never really used them so don't fancy chancing my arm there. Guess I need to mask off the fingerprint and respray.. FFS. There's a skip on the drive, this might be launched into it.. 😡 Al.
  9. After a lovely weekend away in Barcelona, have had a couple of hours this week to finish off the decals, which leaves us here.. There are a load of stencils left on the sheet, but no idea where they're supposed to go. It's a bit frustrating, the stencil placement plan has a completely different set of panel lines to the kit, which leaves me digging around for photos from various angles. There are also a load of stencils that don't even seem to be mentioned in the instructions 🤷‍♂️ some are for the camo schemes, but it's hard to work out what exactly W Sword have in mind. Still, I'm happy, looks decent. Now I need to transport her to the garage (very carefully!) fit a coat of gloss varnish and I can do some weathering. Not going to go mad, I really need to get this finished and I still have some bits to do like put on the pitot tube and sort out the PE FOD guard. It's been a slog, but fingers crossed the end might be in sight.. 🤞 Al
  10. Pre-shading can do a decent job of giving you a faded effect (at least it does when others do it!). Although as someone mentioned above, the green fading to brown was quite common, see below. Pre-shading's not going to achieve that, though. Maybe some liberal post-shading with a green/brown, well thinned mix? Al.
  11. She's a beauty! I'm just finishing a Sword Lightning and have similar frustrations. The panels depicted on the decal placement instructions don't match the panels on the kit, and I can't even find where a load of the decals on the sheet are supposed to go - not mentioned on the instructions 🤷‍♂️ I'm guessing no-one at Sword ever tries to build their kits! Al
  12. End of weekend update. Got the nose wheel in place, with copious amounts of sprue goo. Doesn't look pretty, but seems fairly solid, here's hoping 🤞 Also have the landing gear doors back on so we're ready to recommence decals 🎉 Al
  13. 3rd attempt at securing the front wheel.. I have drilled a whole in a piece of plastic card but enough for the u/c to slot into, and fashioned that card to slot into the bay in roughly the right position. Hoping that a combination of sprue goo and glue will then hold it in position for the rest of eternity 🤞 Meanwhile, the front landing gear doors have also come off. Not surprising as they were only held on with their tiny locations tabs. These have been sanded off to allow for direct attachment to the fuselage. Will get back to the decals eventually! Al
  14. I can't complain that Sword have not given me my money's worth here! Al.
  15. Another chapter in the lightning T.4 saga (and it's beginning to feel like one!). Made a start with the decals which are going down nicely, just trying to be very careful but to break anything. And just like that... That's the second time the nosewheel has come off. The joint between the plastic and the brass rod is a weak spot. I'm going to try and address this by fashioning a plastic plate to go into the wheel bay that will take the leg - much like @giemme did in his build - I've just got to do it whilst not trashing any decals! The decal placement instructions also leave a lot to be desired. I think there are two sets of stencils - one for the silver machines and one for the grey camo, but they don't tell you which is which. Also, the panel lines shown on the plan don't match those on the kit - I remember that from my sword gannet. Means that I'm having to try and find picture references for the placement, which makes the whole process a lot slower. All part of the modelling fun! Al
  16. Made some decent progress this weekend. Would've made more if I hadn't spent so long reading the excellent build thread from @giemme as recommended by @Giorgio N and @scautomoton 🤣 Giorgio was clever, he spotted the problem with the front landing gear before even assembling the radar bullet. Sadly I wasn't even close to that well organised. There's a whole bunch of excellent stuff in there, and it was heart warming to see that I'm not alone in some of the challenges of this kit. It has pumped me to kick in and finish this thing 👊 First up, to start the weekend I put her up on her pins. That nervous moment when you finally find out if there's enough nose weight. Luckily there is. Less luckily, my nosewheel surgery didn't last very long 😟 The leg split from the brass rod when I was trying to attach the landing gear doors. I debated changing tack at this point, but instead opted for a bunch more super glue and trying again 🤞 if it happens again I'll have to reconsider. Then made myself a list of the stuff to do to get her finished - some organisation is what I've been lacking lately! Thanks to that, I've done the following over the weekend: o- painted the radar bullet RAF dark green o- attached the front landing gear doors o- pinned the missile pylon that came off earlier in the build, ready for re-attachment later o- assembled and attached some of the PE aerials (i.e. the ones that did not disappear into the carpet!) o- drill the pitot tube attachment ready to take the aftermarket replacement That last item not fully complete yet, want to have the plastic attachment point glued on before I decal. I really thought I might get to decals today, but have picked up some crappy cold so not feeling too great 😟 if it's decent night's sleep then might get to start decals tomorrow. See how much PE I break off in the process 🤣 To finish off the weekend, here she is standing proud Al
  17. That explains why I couldn't find anything by searching your name last night 🤣
  18. @scautomoton @Giorgio N don't suppose you could point me at a thread or pictures of that approach? My attempt with extending the landing gear leg with a brass rod seemed to have worked, but the leg had just come away from the brass. Have re glued it, but not convinced it's going to work 😟 Al
  19. I got the jig here: https://www.ebmahobby.co.uk/. £10 plus postage for one that perfectly suits this size of kit 👍 Al
  20. Already nearly the end of the week, and very little done. I have attached the nosewheel, though. I ended up glueing a bit of brass rod onto it which reached far enough into the wheel bay to be glued in fairly firmly. Bit of super glue on the brass end and some regular TET where the normal leg meets the wimpy attachment points and it's pretty solid Also invested in a jig after trying to work out which paints I could use to prop her up. Daren't put any weight through the fin as I'm convinced it's going to make a bid for freedom. This MDF jig was £10 and does the job nicely. Also did the assembly of the main gear, going it'll be ready to go on tomorrow. When she can stand up I'll sort out the PE and the few other bits that need to go on, like the missile rail I knocked off a while back. I'll finish this thing yet!!! Al
  21. The jag continues its crawl to the finish line.. I'm flip flopping between two kits at the moment which is doing my head in - don't know how people cope with having more than that on the go at one time! Guess I'm just no good at multi tasking! Anyway, I sprayed the DSG and then needed to do the green. I would normally spray the whole thing grey and then do the green, but due to the pre-shading I didn't want to the green to have more layers of paint and lose the pre-shading, so chose to do the grey only where needed. This has resulted in twice as much masking effort. I masked the grey by cutting out of a Jag plan that I drew the camo on - planned on using the bits left to mask for the green. However, I think if I did that the green and grey would not meet, so needed the green masking to be slightly different. Which meant I gave up on that and reverted to take and blu tack worms.. That took a ridiculous amount of time to achieve. There's a combination of tracing paper lifted slightly off the surface and then blu tack, paper and tape. I was so annoyed at the effort involved that I had a go at spraying the bottom freehand in an attempt to speed things up.. Needless to say, that's not going to work, too much overspray. I was using my 0.2mm needle here with a low pressure. When I tried on my paint mule I was pretty pleased, looked like I got some nice neat lines, but never replicated that on the jag 😞 I think that's because its more obvious on the grey. In actual fact, what this has shown is that I at least don't need to "fill in" the masking between the blue tack, I probably have good enough control. Indeed, with some more practise I might yet one day freehand some camo. I think I had my paint too thin here (made it thinner than normal due to the lower pressure). Have also been told on Twitter that you can take the thing off the front of the airbrush and get neater lines. Might try a couple of things on the underside here.. So, still not finished! Al.
  22. She looks lovely, maybe the motivation I need to get back to the bench this afternoon and make *some* progress on *something*. Been very slow of late. That wingtip light looks the biz, thanks for the picture! 👍
  23. Thanks for that hint. The cross section of the u/c leg is quite small so not sure I could drill into it successfully. At the moment, I'm planning to use some sprue goo to build up the bottom of the bay and then insert the leg into that before it's dry.. it's taking me ages to make the goo at the moment, keep adding sprue but it's still too runny. First time doing it, so prob being too cautious.. Al
  24. Having done a few panels with the powders, decided it was time to move on. Have the following to do: PE aerials etc, landing gear, missiles, re-attach ventral fin, decals, final weathering. Since I don't want super glue anywhere near a decalled model, it's going to have to be the PE stuff first. But, since some of them are on the underside, it's going to have to be undercarriage before that. Easy, we have a plan! Except... There's next to nowhere to mount the front u/c to. There's a couple of mm where the u/c leg touches the ridges inside the bay. Not convinced it's going to be a good join, and even if it was, the leg isn't straight when both sides of the leg are in contact. Would really like to improve this somehow but struggling to think how. Don't think I can do anything with card. If I could extend the length of the leg so it goes further into the bay I might be able to attach it where the two sides taper together. Feels like I could use metal rods like I used on the wings, but the rods I have are not very thick or sturdy. Plastic would be better, a bit of sprue maybe? Grafting onto the leg might be tricky... I thought I could make some quick progress this week, god knows I'm due some.. 😡 Al
  25. @Dunny this is looking lovely! I have this in my stash, very much looking forward to building it. Re: the nav lights - can I just double check, you have drilled just outside the clear part of the light (i.e. somewhere that will eventually be painted) - is that correct? Al.
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